


Born Under a Troubled Sign

by HeyMurphy



Series: This Life Before Me [1]
Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magnus Lives, Magnus is just not having a good time, Mentions of Suicide, heart surgery recovery, post-doomstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24563548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeyMurphy/pseuds/HeyMurphy
Summary: About a month after the events of Doomstar Requiem, Toki wants to celebrate Magnus' birthday. Meanwhile, Magnus is barely keeping his shit together.
Relationships: Magnus Hammersmith/Toki Wartooth
Series: This Life Before Me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780177
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	Born Under a Troubled Sign

**Author's Note:**

> this was a tumblr prompt that went haywire (thank you Ash!), so I decided to make it its own fic instead putting it in my prompt collection haha... oops. 
> 
> by the way this doesn't matter whatsoever, but i headcanon Magnus as a scorpio (like me!), so this actually works out pretty okay timeline-wise if i use Doomstar's Oct. 27th release date as the date of Toki's rescue. that would make Magnus' birthday probably about Nov. 19th or 20th. yes, yes, i think too much about this shit...

After so many years of nothing on his plate, no band, no projects, no responsibility to anyone but himself, this pulled-in-all-directions bullshit was getting old fast. It had happened so quickly. Offdensen had needed a place for him to go once he could get up from the hospital bed, a place to keep him out of Mordhaus and away from the band, but close enough to keep an eye on him. He hadn’t had a moment to himself on his own terms since waking up out of the coma, and he kinda missed it. At least he slept in the coma.

Magnus left the latest staff meeting for the newly-built Dethklok Home for Wayward Musicians and returned to his on-site living quarters, aka his jail cell with a nice kitchen. There was a camera at the door to make sure he stayed or left when he was meant to stay or leave, and he’d been operating under the assumption that the place was bugged. Because why wouldn’t it be? 

And fuck his chest hurt. He unbuttoned his shirt and checked the incision in the hallway mirror. From just below the dip in his clavicle, a red, gnarled line split his chest for about twelve inches--a result of the surgery to repair the stab wound to his heart and whatever that fucking pipe had punctured. Awful. Just fucking awful. He wasn’t exactly taking care of it very well, either. Barely ate, barely slept. What did it matter, really? A fucked up scar to match his fucked up eye and his fucked up face and his fucked up life.

He took a deep, wincing breath and let it out as a long sigh. Whatever.

His phone rang. That fucking stupid “dethphone” everyone in the company seemed to have. Magnus fought it out of his back pocket, swearing as the little spines caught on his jeans. “What??”

“Oh! You pickeds up!”

Magnus swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. He still had no goddamn idea why Toki wanted anything to do with him. They’d had their little moment in the hospital at Mordhaus, blubbering like babies, Magnus apologizing and Toki just so damn happy to see him alive for whatever reason. And he still wasn’t exactly sure why he hadn’t been left to bleed out in the street. Would’ve been a lot easier for everyone, Magnus included.

“Magnus?”

Shit, he kept doing that--getting lost in his own head when he should be speaking to people. He’d probably talked to more people in the past few weeks than he had in the past few years, and his brain just wanted it to stop already. “Yup, I’m here. What is it?”

“Are you gonna bes at home laters?”

Where else would he be? “Yeah.”

“Oh goods! I’m on my way, pal!”

Magnus nearly swore at him. “I’m sorry, you’re what?”

“I’m flyins over! Sees you in a few hours.”

“Okay, but why--” But Toki hung up. Magnus threw the phone at the wall which only sent a shock of grating pain through his sternum. He pressed a hand to the incision. “Ahh, son of a bitch.”

Fucking Toki. He really didn’t want to deal with him tonight. All the talking, all the laughing. They hadn’t seen each other since he’d left the hospital, but he had to imagine Toki wanted to pick up where they left off before everything went to shit. Probably wanted to drag his ass to laser tag or something equally asinine. God fucking damnit, all he wanted to do was sleep.

Easing down onto the couch, he closed his eyes and tried to breathe. Even if Toki came over, it wouldn’t be forever. Time would pass, the kid would return to Mordhaus. It would be okay. Magnus would just have to be patient. He could be patient. He was good at that. Or at least he used to be.

All right. All right. He was fine. 

So he waited for Toki. He sat in front of the TV for a while, attempted to nap with no success, made a frozen dinner that he barely touched. Through it all, his chest ached with increasing discomfort, the result of being too rough with himself lately. He wasn’t allowed to keep pain medication, though. Definitely not opioids given his history, but not even over-the-counter stuff. Assholes. If he wanted to kill himself again, it wouldn’t be with pills.

Toki finally knocked on the door with his typical shave-and-a-haircut, and Magnus called him in. “There’s no lock.”

Toki poked his head in the door and the rest of him followed after. He carried a white box in both hands and grinned from ear to ear. Magnus wrenched himself up from the couch and tried to keep the twist of agony off his face.

“Surprise!” Toki cried.

“It’s hardly a surprise, buddy, you told me you were coming.”

“No, no, this!” And Toki shoved the box at him. “Opens it, opens it! Oh, I can’ts waits to see you’s face!”

Screaming expletives in the safety of his head, Magnus tilted the box away from him and slowly opened the top, fully expecting something to pop out. When nothing happened, he peered inside.

Oh.

It was a cake. Small, homemade. Buttercream frosting, and scribbled on top in icing were two stick figures more or less recognizable as Toki and himself holding hands under a rainbow. Across the rainbow in white icing it read _Happy Birthday Magnus!_

“I...forgot it was my birthday.”

“That’s okay. Toki remembers.”

Magnus set the cake down on the kitchen table and stared at it, chest throbbing. “Why would you do this?”

“What you means ‘whys’? Because we’s friends!”

“I’m no friend of yours, Toki.”

“Sure you ams! You wents kinda crazy but you’s gettins better now.”

“Oh, I dunno about that.”

But Toki kept smiling. “Eats some cake. Cake’s whats makes bad feelings goes away.”

Magnus didn’t have the energy to argue.

Toki went into the kitchen and shuffled through a few drawers before asking, “You don’ts has a knife?”

“Nope, not allowed.”

Toki went quiet, searched a little longer, then returned to the table with a fork. “Here!”

Magnus took the fork hesitantly. “Just one? You’re not having any?”

“I can’ts has sugar, remembers?”

Of course he remembered. He’d given Toki his insulin injections for a month.

“So wait, you made a cake that you can’t eat?”

Toki just laughed. “I mades it for _you_ , not me.”

For some reason that made Magnus’ eyes well up. He bit the inside of his cheek and forced it all down. The doctors had told him it was normal to be more emotional than usual during recovery, but god damn. It was a fucking cake and he wanted to cry about it.

Magnus shoved the fork into his little stick figure foot and took a bite. _Oh_. It was _really_ good. He’d been living off TV dinners and cheap pizza, hospital food before that, and finally having something actually edible in his mouth was heaven. He closed his eyes, chewing reverently. When he opened them, Toki had his fists curled excitedly under his chin.

“So?? Ams good?”

Magnus went for another bite. “Yeah.” Popped it in his mouth. He couldn’t get enough, and before he realized how much he’d been eating, about a third of the cake was gone. He put down the fork, embarrassed. “I’ll, uh. Save the rest for breakfast.”

Toki hadn’t stopped beaming at him for a second. “You wanna dos something now?”

Ah, here it came. What exhausting fucking outing did Toki have in mind? An arcade? The mall? “Sure, just, uh, not anything too--”

“Thoughts maybes we could just hangs out here, watch a movies.”

“Here?”

“If that’s okay.”

Magnus let go of a rough, relieved breath. “Yeah. Yeah, buddy, let’s do that.”

They’d found an old black and white samurai movie just starting on TV and settled in on the couch to watch. Toki sat cross-legged, enraptured, making little comments (”wowee!” “oh, brutal!”) every time something cool happened. Magnus rested back and stretched out his legs, trying to find a position that didn’t make his pain any worse. And once he did, he began to doze off.

He jerked his chin up from his chest, flinching awake, pressing subtly at his incision. Toki noticed. “Ams yous okay?”

“Think so.”

Toki looked at the movie again for a moment then turned back to him. “Can I sees it?”

“You don’t wanna.”

“I dos.”

Magnus grumbled and shifted to face him a little better, not liking the grinding sensation in his sternum as he moved. Made him feel a little sick. Still, he unbuttoned his shirt and parted it just enough for Toki to get a good look.

Toki’s eyes went huge with shock, and in the light of the TV Magnus could see tears gathering and threatening to fall. He buttoned himself up again in a hurry, flustered. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, kid.”

“I’m sorries,” Toki wailed a little, rubbing at his eyes. “Just looks like it really, reallies hurts.”

“That’s ‘cause it does.” Magnus couldn’t deny that. He turned back to the movie just in time to see one of the samurai cut himself open with his own sword. He put a hand to his chest again, feeling his repaired heart pounding away in his ribs. Being allowed to die like that would’ve been nice, he thought. By his own hands. An atonement for all the terrible, unforgivable shit he’d done. Not something he was supposed to fucking wake up from in a hospital bed. Toki was silent. Magnus snatched up the remote to turn the TV off.

They sat in the dark for a moment until Toki spoke, his voice small. “Do you still wants to do that?”

“To do what?”

“To...die.”

Magnus grumbled noncommittally. “Maybe. I dunno. It doesn’t matter.” He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “More than anything I just wanna fucking sleep.”

The couch sprang up a little as Toki got up, and when Magnus lowered his hands he realized Toki was offering his.

“Then comes on. Let’s go to asleeps.”

Magnus looked up at him. This kid, this man, this _god_ or whatever the fuck--why was he bothering? Why was he here, being so kind to him? Magnus didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve anything. Death, sleep, a friend. Not a goddamn thing.

Toki leaned down and took his hands. No one had touched him in weeks, and the last person had been Toki, too, now that he thought about it. “I means it. Ups.”

“...fine.”

He lumbered to his feet with Toki’s help and dragged ass into the bedroom. “You gets ready for bed,” Toki told him. “I’ll bes right back.”

In the dark of the bedroom, Magnus wormed carefully out of his clothes and pulled up a pair of pajama bottoms. He could feel the two halves of his breastbone click against each other as he reclined into the pillows, heard it in his fucking head, and he gulped down sudden nausea. His eyes drifted shut. He was so tired. But no matter how much he tried to sleep, there always came a point where he woke himself up, yanked himself from the edge of that deep, restorative sleep he really needed, as if he were afraid of going too far under and never resurfacing.

He heard soft footsteps on the carpet, felt the mattress sink a bit, and then something _so warm_ draped over his chest and he groaned before he could think to stop himself. The pain retreated, not all the way, but enough to unknot his stomach. When he opened his eyes, Toki was there.

“Warms wash cloth,” he said. “It helps?”

“Yeah.” Magnus shuddered in relief, so grateful he could cry. And when Toki placed a hand so tenderly on his brow, he finally did. Just for a second. Just to get it out. “Sorry. Fuck...”

Toki smiled down at him, and even in the darkness he seemed to glow. Maybe he _was_ a god.

“Try tos rest now. Ams gonna looks after yous all night, so don’ts worry abouts nothing.”

“...really?”

“Mm-hm.” Toki’s fingers started to weave into his curls. It was...nice. “Happy birthdays, Magnus.”

“...thanks, buddy.” And Magnus slept.


End file.
